Decision Against De Facto

Although the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly ruled that separate school systems for whites and Negroes are unconstitutional, de facto segregation resulting from residential patterns has until now seemed beyond reach of the courts. Last week Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that de facto segregation is just as unlawful as the kind imposed on Negroes by Southern legislatures.

A native of New Orleans who ordered his city's schools integrated in a series of decisions between 1956 and 1962, Judge Wright delivered his 183-page ruling in a case involving the schools of Washington, D.C., in which 90% of the students are Negroes. "Racially and socially homogeneous schools," he declared, "damage the minds and spirit of all children who attend them--the Negro, the white, the poor and the affluent--and block the attainment of the broader goals of democratic education, whether the segregation occurs by law or by fact."

Judge Wright found that the District of Columbia spends $100 more per pupil in its few predominantly white elementary schools and that these schools have vacancies, while Negro schools are overcrowded. Wright ordered the school board to bus Negro children to fill vacancies in the white schools beginning next fall. He asked the board to consider establishing educational parks, to pair schools for "maximum" integration, and to "anticipate the possibility of" a student-exchange program with predominantly white suburban school districts. Such cooperation, of course, would require mass bussing, which is both expensive and inconvenient. Conceding that absolute racial balance is impossible, Wright stressed that the immediate need was for more money to improve the quality of education in schools that remain segregated.

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